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A former Obama administration official is defending Mitt Romney. "Bain Capital is not now, nor has it ever been, some kind of Gordon Gekko-like, fire-breathing corporate raider that slashed and burned companies, immolating jobs wherever they appear in its path," writes Steven Rattner, a one-time auto advisor, in a POLITICO Opinion piece.

Are Romney's GOP rivals smart to continue their attacks on capitalism that have so far fallen flat? Would this theme be any more effective for the Obama campaign?

The attacks on Bain would seem to be more of a general election strategy in a country where unemployment is still high. While it is clearly part of a strategy to show that Romney can't beat Obama in the general election, it doesn't resonate with Republican voters who believe in capitalism, and it will make it more difficult, should one of the others win the primary, for them to attract the Republican base in a general.

Mitt Romney has been quick to justify his record of laying-off workers and closing plants as CEO of Bain Capital by wrapping himself in the “creative destruction” of free market capitalism But Romney’s idea of capitalism is that you can fire workers and strip companies on the way up, and then if you are big and influential enough, demand taxpaying workers bail you out on the way down.

While Romney’s supporters are putting up a heavy smoke screen, Tea partiers should understand that, as a supporter of the TARP Wall Street bailout, Romney’s “creative destruction” only applies to Main Street, not Wall Street.

Far from being anti-capitalist, Mitt Romney’s opponents are asking one of the fundamental questions that brought forth the tea party rebellion: Do we have free markets and moral hazard or do we have crony capitalism where favored interests have the advantage over the little guy?

Romney has given several muddled and disingenuous explanations for why he supported the TARP Wall Street bailout. In his book he said, "[TARP] was intended to prevent a run on virtually every bank and financial institution in the country," and he says "it did, in fact, keep our economy from total meltdown."

Later, during The Washington Post – Bloomberg News debate Romney claimed the $700 billion Wall Street rescue package "was designed to keep not just a collapse of individual banking institutions, but to keep the entire currency of the country worth something."

Nothing could be further from the truth.

TARP was not sold as a program to prop-up the dollar; it was sold as a means of keeping credit markets liquid, to keep banks lending to businesses, so businesses would keep people employed.

From the perspective of keeping people employed, TARP has been a spectacular failure.

Since TARP was passed three years ago, far from using TARP funds for business credit, so businesses might keep people employed, banks have reported three years of shrinking loan portfolios. Millions of workers have remained unemployed or underemployed during those three years, but their taxes will be paying for the bailouts Romney supported for years to come.

And the major reason TARP failed to protect jobs was that instead of being a program to keep credit available by moving illiquid mortgage-backed securities off the books of banks, TARP quickly became a no-strings-attached cash infusion to favored insider financial institutions and corporations, whose highly compensated employees are now supporting Mitt Romney.

Not surprisingly, just a cursory examination of Federal Election Commission campaign finance reports shows Romney banked over $798,000 from employees of TARP recipients.

To Mitt Romney, venture capitalist, the average worker is an expendable line on a spreadsheet, until that worker’s tax dollars were needed to bailout financiers who promoted the leveraged buyouts and packaged the exotic financial instruments that led to the financial meltdown of 2008.

Who is more anti-capitalist? Is it Romney’s opponents, who question whether or not a form of capitalism that allows a handful or rich people to avoid moral hazard, manipulate the lives of thousands of other people and then walk off with the money by getting a bailout from the taxpayers?

Or are the real anti-capitalists Mitt Romney, and his establishment friends in the Washington – Wall Street Axis, who hypocritically like having the option of firing the little guy and stripping the factory on Main Street on the way up, but then use their inside power and influence to demand those same little taxpayers bail them out on the way down?

Obama might wish to attack Bain Capital, but does Obama really want a conversation about bad investments (Solyndra/stimulus/bailouts) and job destruction? How many more Americans are unemployed today than the day he walked into the Oval Office - more than one million. Not sure their personal testimony would all fit in a 60-second ad.

Attacking Bain is a more likely approach than some campaign slogans of the past.. I doubt we will ever hear Obama say “Morning in America” or “Four more years” or “Are you better off than you were four years ago” or ask as mayor Ed Koch used to “How am I doing?”

There are two problems with the Bain attacks: first, private equity is a legitimate method of facilitating investments in non-public companies, often new ones, who are struggling to make a profit. As Rattner's essay points out, these companies benefit from the infusion of extra capital; sometimes, they grow, sometimes, they are sold; sometimes they still crash; but absent the private equity route, they often wouldn't have a life-line.

The lapses Rattner describes - an account manager being too aggressive and pushing a company to take on too much debt; issuing investors dividends too quickly at the expense of the company's long-term viability - are risks in the private equity world. But broadly attacking a company without identifying whether it even has a poor record of lapses follows a lazy, sloppy trend of discrediting professions instead on focusing on how a given professional carried out his ethical responsibilities. Its the stigmatization of whole lines of work because we don't like what these industries do on their worst days.

Of course, if politicians are really serious about delegitimating the private equity world, and its cousins in the hedge fund world, they ought to forego raising money from these sources. Don't attack Bain in the morning and then dial for dollars from the industry in the afternoon, or fete them at Martha's Vineyard this summer.

The reason these attacks have failed to catch fire with the conservative base is because they weren't intended for the conservative base. They were intended to paint Mitt Romney as a Guardian of Plutocracy, which is fine in the primary, since that's what GOP stands for, but it's devastating for the general election.

Newt wanted to hurt Romney for the general election and then use Romney's general election liabilities to stop his primary momentum - but on an even more primal level, he wanted revenge. The fact that Rattner says that Bain was actually very mild on the job killing for a private equity shop is a distinction for connoisseurs of private equity. Try explaining that one in a 30 second ad.

The Gingrich and Perry attacks on Mitt Romney's work at Bain Capital are appalling. We expect that from Obama - as in yesterday's "insourcing" press conference - because his understanding of how markets work is so slim and everything, for him, is politics. Those in the party that purports to stand for free markets should never stoop to such shameless pandering.

Steven Rattner's piece in POLITICO this morning nicely summarizes the facts surrounding Romney's work at Bain Capital. And yesterday my colleague Steve H. Hanke pointed to a more detailed study issued recently by the National Bureau of Economic Research, "Private Equity and Employment." As Rattner puts it, Bain Capital's record "was extraordinary, among the best in the business."

Yes, restructuring companies may cost jobs. Letting them fail does too - but also costs those who've invested in them, many of whom are or will be small retirees. At least Romney did it with private funds, not with taxpayer money or regulatory protections. That's how capitalism works, for the benefit of all of us.

The Bain attacks have already worked to elevate the Occupy movement from tents and tarps to a national debate on income inequality.

With productivity rising, wages stagnant, and private retirements falling, Republicans used pension envy to fuel resentment against unions and public sector employees. Now the GOP establishment is apoplectic because Mitt Romney's "politics of envy" risks turning those populist pitchforks from Washington back toward Wall Street.

Which brings us to Steven Rattner and his defense of his and Romney's former employer, Bain Capital. The piece is overly facile - few are condenming the company's right to exist while many are criticizing what even Rattner calls Romney's "problem children" decisions that ruined companies and ther jobs theeirin. We aren't attacking venture capitalists who invest in startups but vulture capitalists who feed off struggling companies. Romney knows the difference - his own aide used the vulture capitalist attack against Meg Whitman in 2010.

This Bain debate is an incarnation of the GOP fight between the establishment business wing led by Romney and the tea party wing led by many. Given the math, can Romney's "problem children" derail his campaign? Perhaps - if the tea party finds a singular alternative or a positive messenger amidst the Romney-Perry-Gingrich scrum. Otherwise, it's on to November where the larger Bain question is what this debate says about the core American values of fairness and equality as well as the role of goverment in achieving those values. A far more interesting op-ed would be why Rattner and Romney disagree on the Obama-Biden auto industry rescue. Clearly Bain taught them different lessons - when it comes to whether public private partnerships can rescue industry, Obama auto czar Rattner said yes but Romney said no. Americans struggling for jobs have a clear choice between President Obama, who believes government can be the investor or employer of last resort, and Mitt Romney, who does not.

Regardless of whether the Bain experience helps or hurts Mitt Romney as a candidate for a presidential nomination, it tells us something very useful about his potential presidential qualities. It was the ramrod backbone of TR and FDR that contributed to their greatness; Truman facing down the steel executives; Ike sending troops to Little Rock; JFK’s response to Cuban missiles. A president must be capable of being an S.O.B. when conducting the nation’s business. I’m now feeling better about Mitt.

Republicans attacking the Bain type of capitalism? That's amusing. They obviously forgot who their audience was.

The Bain kind of capitalism is exactly what is occurring on Wall Street and why the 99 percent are angry and fed up with the one percent; Bain capital behavior hurts the middle class, America's working class. And how hypocritical of Gingrich, Santorum, Perry, Huntsman and Paul to engage in attacks against Romney for Bain capital behavior when you look at their economic policies of the past and look at the companies they happily take money from to further their campaigns and their run for president.

This is political pandering as usual in an election year. I think the president is smart to stay away from these types of attacks, because so far this strategy has failed for the Republicans; and the president, will leave himself wide open to more attacks on his economic policies, the state of the economy, unemployment, etc., where he already has some explaining' to do.

This attack will work very well in the general election, particularly when juxtaposed against Romney's policy positions.

The power of Bain is in the voice of the real people who were harmed. The audacity of Romney in his election night speech in New Hampshire blaming the Obama administration for people losing their pensions is amazing.

Its doubtful that the theme plays well among tea party Republicans whose movement was started by a derivative trader's screed against helping underwater homeowners. But it will stick to Romney and could be potent in the election.

Obama has to make this election a choice, not simply a referendum on his policies. Romney's vulture capitalist background - to borrow from Rick Perry - will provide a clear lens to view his economic policies that feature tax breaks for the wealthy and an assault on basic security programs for working Americans - like Medicare and Medicaid. It's not surprising that the Man from Bain wants to cut taxes for the wealthiest Americans, end Medicare as we know it and repeal even modest reforms of Wall Street, but it isn't appealing.

The attacks on Mitt Romney’s record at Bain could have been lifted directly from the Obama playbook. I’ll bet the Obama team is watching carefully to see how and if it resonates. Key will be the response of independent voters.

Attacking Mitt Romney for his work at Bain Capital is a dumb move by his GOP rivals. Who are they pandering to? The anti-business rhetoric is making these candidates look small and silly. But politically it will work in his favor as more rank-and-file Republicans rally in support of his candidacy.

Getting hit with this type of criticism now gives Romney the opportunity to sharpen his response to the barrage of attacks that will come in the general campaign. Romney saved businesses, and made them more competitive and durable for the long-term. Voters prefer a leader who makes tough decisions in the face of difficult circumstances. In the end, his work strengthened enterprises and saved jobs. Given the state of our nation's fiscal affairs and the fact that the federal government is being run into the ground, a leader with Romney's experience will appeal to a wide range of voters, especially independents. Romney can use the attacks to his advantage, and my guess is that he will.

Maybe you did this skit at a summer camp. Or maybe you saw Dudley Do-Right play it on the “Rocky and Bullwinkle Fan Club.” The villain tells the damsel, “You must pay the rent.” She wails, “But I can’t pay the rent.” This goes on as the tension mounts before Dudley Do-Right jumps in and says, “I’ll pay the rent,” to which the damsel sighs, “My hero!”

“Curses!” says the villain. “Foiled again.”

I bet when Mitt Romney was growing up that he rooted for Snidley Whiplash. Why, he must have wondered, must the landlord be the villain?

Mitt Romney tries desperately to come across as an optimistic guy, but every time he opens his mouth the bitter resentment of wealthy entitlement comes flowing out. He is a Top Hat Capitalist who roots for the landlord who evicts, the banker who forecloses, and the factory owner who closes shop and leaves town.

Back in October, Romney went to Nevada, the state with the highest foreclosure rate, and opposed helping homeowners stay in their homes. “Don’t try to stop the foreclosure process. Let it run its course and hit the bottom,” he told the editorial board of the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

In November, he went to his native Michigan and said he would not have bailed out Chrysler and General Motors. “My view with regards to the bailout was that, whether it was by President Bush or by President Obama, it was the wrong way to go,” said Romney.

Former Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm, a Democrat, called that “a knife in the back.” Even current Gov. Rick Snyder, a tea party favorite, was appalled. “It wasn’t just one or two companies at risk, but the entire national supply chain,” Snyder told the Detroit News. “Losing that would have had a devastating impact on the economy.”

Now Winning Our Future, the super PAC supporting Newt Gingrich, has released a documentary called “When Mitt Romney Came to Town” that portrays Romney at Bain Capital as Simon Legree for the corporate raider set.

This, says Romney, is an assault on capitalism itself.

“President Obama wants to put free enterprise on trial,” said Romney in New Hampshire. “In the last few days, we have seen some desperate Republicans join forces with him. This is such a mistake for our Party and for our nation. This country already has a leader who divides us with the bitter politics of envy. We must offer an alternative vision. I stand ready to lead us down a different path, where we are lifted up by our desire to succeed, not dragged down by a resentment of success.”

This attempt to Occupy South Carolina will surely fail. It’s too early in the movie for the bit players to stop the bad guy. Dudley Do-Right makes his entrance later in the film, which means that we have a long summer ahead of us of listening to how much some people must hate America if they want millionaires to pay higher taxes. And by some people, I’m talking about 69 percent of Americans according to a CNN poll. That not-so silent majority also wants to keep its payroll tax cut.

And if you don’t mind, some jobs, though five percent of the country has stopped looking for work, and 20 percent of the country is either unemployed or underemployed.

Romney is now equating the aspirations of economic survival with his desire not to be picked on. Somehow super rich have become yet another aggrieved class deserving of protection, the Lucre-Americans. These poor little rich people have it so hard, what with all those people who hate America asking them to pay their fair share while working Americans share bus fares.

In New Hampshire, Mitt Romney tried to give a “Morning in America” speech, even lifting the “shining city on the hill" line from Puritan John Winthrop’s 1630 sermon ”A Model of Christian Charity.” But his message now equates his record of closing factories and exporting jobs to “the American ideals of economic freedom,” and it comes across as defensive at best, resentful at worst. And if you don’t like it, you’re as un-American and embittered with envy as the president, my friends.

No matter how many times Romney recites the lyrics to “America the Beautiful,” his speeches end up sounding as dour as Jimmy Carter warning the country about a “crisis of confidence.” Romney can flash those white teeth all he wants, but somehow it never looks like that man is really smiling.

I am not certain I grant the premise that these have been attacks on capitalism. They, to be sure, have been attacks on Romney and on private equity firms that make their profits through buying distressed companies and selling them off as “parts.” That function plays an important role in a capitalist system, but attacking its consequences is not the same as attacking the system.

Whether these attacks work or not is yet to be seen. Romney thwarted them in New Hampshire, but he had some extraordinary advantages there that the press all but ignored - like the fact that two-thirds of New Hampshire receives television through the Boston media market and Romney has been a “favorite son” type candidate for six years. A more relevant test of the attack pudding will be in South Carolina.

Robert White Assistant professor of Management, Iowa State University :

Romney’s time at Bain Capital is a real two-edged sword for the candidate.

On one hand, his experience at Bain demonstrates a strong ability to turn around struggling enterprises. With broad concern in the electorate surrounding federal spending and debt levels, if Romney and his team can effectively project an image of “Romney as turnaround specialist” to voters, I think he has a good chance at winning both his party’s nomination and the general election.

On the other hand, if Romney’s opponents are able to project Romney as a Wall Street type who doesn’t care about the little guy, who slashes and burn his way through companies, then Romney loses.

At this point, Romney’s opponents seem to be winning the messaging battle. Romney’s team must get out ahead of this story or Romney risks being painted as part of the economic problem rather than part of its solution.

The attacks have already fallen flat. When Rush Limbaugh chides Newt Gingrich for his attacks on the fundamentals of capitalism (e.g. the ability to fire and hire freely), then you know the attacks are already dead in the water, at least among conservative Republicans. When Newt Gingrich gets testy in his defense of his critique of the Bain kind of capitalism, then you know the attacks are already on the wane.

The irony of the (non-Romney) Republican candidates criticizing Bain Capital is that these very candidates encouraged this type of capitalism in past policymaking. Candidates Gingrich, Santorum, Perry, Huntsman and Paul are not exempt from Bain-esque behavior. In fact, that is what the free market allows and even aids and abets. That is what Wall Street chicanery is all about.

Anti-Bainism borders on populism by appealing to the growing inequality and growing poverty in this country. Hopefully it is not simply a cheap attack by candidates on the Republican frontrunner and, instead, a genuine commitment to a different kind of economic policy. While I doubt it is the latter, at least we've got a conversation going among Republican candidates about a type of capitalism that is economically underserving America's working class. (Oh but wait, Santorum doesn't think we have classes in this country.)

Somewhere beyond the surly bonds of Earth, St. Ronald Reagan is choking on his jelly beans from how many times his name is invoked while his eleventh commandment is not just ignored, but as Steven Rattner said, immolated.

Does anyone else find it utter hilarious that we Dems are having to defend Mitt Romney against his fellow Republicans? If you search the archives of this august publication, you will find that even I have had to step up and tell the field to stop picking on Guy Smiley. And believe me: not only am I a partisan, but I have a personal connection to the policies of buying up companies and selling them off. My father looks for work as we speak because this same type of company bought up the machines of his factory and sold them off. He didn't lose his job: he knows exactly where it is: southern Mexico. And why is that? Because shareholders would make more money. Got to give it up to those job creators, boy...

What is evident through all these Republican attacks on Romney is that the Republican field is content to lose to President Obama if Romney is the nominee. Primaries are a curious balance between attacks and being conciliatory, so that when the general election comes around Jim Leher and other moderators cannot use your fellow party members' lines against you. Well, everything we have ever known about politics is out on its ear. When it comes to attacking your fellow Republican, bar the door, Katy! Every candidate still in the race is of the mind that if it ain't me, it ain't anybody. As they say in boxing, let's go to the tale of the tape.

The person that won the Iowa and New Hampshire contests is a man that has been married to the same woman for four decades, has five upstanding kids, is highly educated, made a ton of money, has executive experience in the private and public sector, and was the governor of the bluest of states. That is right out of central casting! You could not dream up someone more Republican than Mitt Romney! Republicans and tea party members are gaga over Ayn Rand's John Galt, the protagonist of her novel Atlas Shrugged (Paul Ryan even makes his staffers read it-and by the way my Repub friends: novel means it is fiction).

Mitt Romney is a living, breathing John Galt, and he is being torn down for it. It would be like Democrats tearing down their primary front runner for being for equality and civil rights. And the Democrats already have their ammo: Romney created and implemented a version of health care for his state that the national system will use as a blueprint. In his Senate run against Ted Kennedy Romney had more positions than the Kama Sutra. And the crown jewel: his buy-in bet of $10,000. Man, those March Madness pools at Bain Capital must have been something to see (gimme $10k on Gonzaga)!

Much like the payroll tax fiasco that embroiled Congress at the end of the year, Republicans have painted themselves into a corner. They have railed against everything with such fervor that now they have to attack the very things that make them Republicans, and it has bled over to their nomination process. Where is the Repub chair in all this? Mr. Priebus, you wanted to run this show; so do it. I know that Rushbo is the defacto chair of the party, but put up a fight! My chairwoman is kicking you and your party all over the field with such force she is going to need new shoes.

As I write this from Nashville, the weather person says we should expect snow in the mid-South today. But seeing that Republicans are attacking capitalism, we can expect frogs and locusts as well: it is truly the end days. Mayans: 1; the rest of us: 0.

The present campaign tactics from capitalism being attacked to Christian fear mongering are a direct consequence of the Supreme Court granting corporations person-hood.

The Republicans running for president are eating each other at the feeding trough of the Super Pacs. I do not think it will be the route of the Obama campaign once that gets into high gear. But then again, the Supreme Court opened Pandora's box and so far the Congress has not shown the will to close it.

The Bain attacks probably won't work for Gingrich and Perry but they have brought smiles to the faces of Democrats. The vulture capitalism charges show how much impact the Occupy movement has had on the campaign dialogue.

What Romney and his team seem to be missing is they brought the Bain issue on themselves since Romney has been arguing “make me president, I know how to create jobs”.

The problem is that private equity firms are not in the business of making jobs, they are in the business of making money. If Romney was arguing that he should be president because he knows how to make money (not a good argument in my opinion) then he wouldn’t be dealing with this, but now it speaks to the bigger narrative of Romney always saying whatever it takes or whatever is expedient for that day. The other issue is that Bain’s record of successful versus unsuccessful investments blunts any attack Romney would have on things like Solyndra.

If Romney is going to run the government like a business, shouldn’t the success rate of good versus bad investments be similar? So yes, it will be effective but more as a piece of a bigger point not necessarily as a standalone issue.

Given Steven Rattner's track record, Romney might want a better character witness. Many private equity companies engage in financial engineering. This has nothing to do with improving companies, it is about ripping off taxpayers, creditors, workers and the communities in which they do business.

Gov. Romney's opponents are absolutely right to scrutinize the record of Bain Capital in this regard, especially since he has made his business record a centerpiece of his qualifications for the presidency. Of course whether his opponents are doing this honestly is another question altogether.

It's too soon to say whether the attacks on Mitt Romney's record at Bain Capital have fallen flat. They've barely begun. At the least they reinforce images voters have of Romney as a greedy, bloodless corporate overlord. Between now and November, voters can expect to learn even more about Bain Capital than we ever dreamed possible.

But it's not the character and values of capitalist economics that's on trial, it's the character and values of Mitt Romney's economics that's on trial. He was in the business of making money for investors over the interests of businesses and workers. His statutory and fiduciary duty was to his private investors not the men and women put out of work by leveraging companies into bankruptcy.

Besides, we've seen this all before. We have already tested out the vulture values of Romneynomics during the failed eight years of the only other business school MBA presidency that we have had, that of George W Bush - and there's not a dime's worth of difference between the economic plans for the country between Romney and Bush. Americans should expect more of the same from Bush to Romney. Worth remembering that George W. Bush's economic record is the worst since Herbert Hoover insofar as GDP growth, jobs, median incomes, and financial-market performance.

His venture government flipped budget surpluses to budget deficits. His venture tax cut rewarded millionaires over veterans. His venture military excursion into Iraq and Afghanistan cost the nation $1 trillion and nearly 5,000 of our men and women in the field. His venture mismanagement of the economy included 22 months of recession during his presidency. Bush capitalism and Romney capitalism are one and the same.

The fuss over Bain Capital will not drag Mitt Romney down. He made a mistake in exaggerating his record at Bain, but it's not a very consequential one.

The presidential election will turn on President Obama's job numbers - not Mitt Romney's. In any event, it's better for Romney for the issue to be aired now, when he has time to defuse it, than in the fall.

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